Seems like the vast majority of people I've known who go into sales related work as long-term career stuff end up being insufferable douches who can't keep their work lives seperate from their personal lives. How do they have any friends or social lives when they spend most of their existence trying to annoy everyone they can with their sales bullchit?

At every high level the job is sales

Investment banker - You're not doing any financial modelling anymore you are making relationships and closing deals
Engineer - You're a director of your engineering firm now trying to secure clients
Lawyer - You're a partner now trying to secure clients
Tradie - You own your own regional plumbing business and you have employees doing the grunt work and yet again you're out there networking and trying to get clients

Etc.

Lessons from Peter Thiel on the importance of sales:


“Even though sales is everywhere, most people underrate its importance.”

"Sales is the opposite: an orchestrated campaign to change surface appearances without changing the underlying reality.”

"Superior sales and distribution by itself can create a monopoly, even with no product differentiation. The converse is not true.”

"Most businesses get zero distribution channels to work: poor sales rather than bad product is the most common cause of failure. If you can get just one distribution channel to work, you have a great business. If you try for several but don’t nail one, you’re finished.”

"The most valuable businesses of coming decades will be built by entrepreneurs who seek to empower people rather than try to make them obsolete.”

“If humans and computers together could achieve dramatically better results than either could attain alone, what other valuable businesses could be built on this core principle?”

I haven't made many new friends since I started working in sales. Maybe 2-3 actual friends. Just a lot of acquaintances and clients who I kinda think of as distant friends.

At the same time though, most of the people I socialize with aren't the same market as my clients, so I can keep a separation there.

Sales is the perfect profession for someone with a handful of narcissistic traits such as myself though.

Yep, this is very true. My first Sales job was for a company where something like half of the employees were employed in aggressive sales positions. They grew from like 20th largest to the largest company in it's field in only 5 years based on how aggressive they were.

I was absolutely awful at sales going into that job, and from the skills I learned I now am self employed earning $500k+ per year and only really work like 10-15 hours per week. Could actually take on employees and make a lot more, but I'm pretty happy with my current situation.

At my prior company we had mutual fund wholesalers making legit 1 million plus a year ...We had around 50 wholesalers and 5 made 1 mil plus and about 25 made over 500k plus

I was supporting a wholesaler who was 28 and made 700k and I made 176k lmao

But they instilled that crazy go hard mentality, it was like wolf of wall street lite .... an absolute sweat shop, I was on the phone making 70 dials per day demanding people buy our funds/ETFs, blasting emails, taking clients out and getting them smashed... a financial advisor wouldn't be interested and I'd have to call him a week later and try and pitch again

Turned me into a bit of a cold blooded psycho

Yep. this sounds exactly like the place I worked, except it was entirely over the phone and computer. The hours were 8AM to 7-8PM Monday thru Friday and usually 10AM-5PM on Saturdays. A legit super stressful 65-70 hours every week. Combined with a hour commute each way, I pretty much wanted to kill myself after a couple years. But I guess it was worth it.

a guy tells you no, do you call back over and over, almost harassing them? is that how it really goes? like how telemarketers do it(i hate telemarketers sometimes)

id like to learn sales

It basically boils down to not taking no for an answer. Get yourself into a mindset where you can make people comfortable enough to where people wouldn't think of buying from anybody else. Because that's what it boils down to.

Top sales people = giga chad


everyone else = timmy, beta cuck or incels




itt beta cuck copes

that's interesting because thats my mindset sort of, if i have something to sell, i usually think im giving the best deal for the customer (ebay related)

We had like 50 different funds/ETFs on our shelf.

The sales process wasn't like I'd call a guy and pitch him the hottest fund it was more a consultative approach. So obviously I'm reading the same thing in the markets as an advisor would be. So you pick out key topics and sort of direct the advisor by asking questions.

So for example. "John last time we spoke about our NA equity fund and you mentioned you're more of a stock picker for the equity portion of your book. Powell keeps saying inflation is transitory what do you think?"

Then John will be like, oh I think that's bs or no I don't think it's bs etc. If he says it's bs I'll be like how much cash do you have on the sidelines? are your clients pissed about this? and then he'll be like sort of and then I'll introduce a fixed income fund that allocates to treasury inflation protected securities that does well in inflation and then usually he'll be like ok send me an email and I'll send him an email with comments from the portfolio management team, risk/return metrics and some materials he can pitch this product to his client. Then it's just a process of tracking the markets and following up with him with timely material until he pulls the trigger and invests in the fund. We're selling to guys who manage often upwards of billions of dollars who will sometimes allocate up to 20 million plus in one of our funds so it's a long complex sales process where we sometimes even have to get portfolio managers that have degrees from Harvard and chit involved - basically a ton of due dil on the advisors end because making a 20 mil plus investment isn't a small deal.

I'm sure its the same with tech sales where the sales process is a long drawn out process and the CIO or whatever you're selling to isn't just going to pull the trigger on your HR software after one call. More like 10 calls and 5 meetings type of thing.

Basically you have to have a lot of chit in your back pocket and be really in tune with the business landscape (markets, other fund companies etc.) and be able to direct conversations by asking relevant questions. A good meeting or sales call has the prospect talking 80 percent of the time and you the other 20 percent.

Same chit in accounting. you do chit work your first few years, become a manager and learn client relations, and if you want to be a partner you have to learn to sell.

It's not for me